Sitefinity Watch

From Bulgaria to Arizona to Texas in 30 days

Gabe Sumner — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:04:54 GMT

The Sitefinity Watch blog has been quiet for several weeks and I apologize for this. There has been a lot happening behind the scenes and my time has been very limited lately. However, I wanted to provide a brief overview of what’s been happening lately…

Where to start?

Early in October I, along with other Telerik Evangelists, travelled to Sofia, Bulgaria to attend DevReach. DevReach is a .NET conference in Eastern Europe that is co-sponsored by Telerik. Telerik has strong roots in the .NET community and is able to bring many .NET experts to this conference.

DevReach brings industry experts together from all over the world to share the latest .NET information. DevReach also gives us (Telerik & Sitefinity) an opportunity to get some great feedback about Sitefinity’s future roadmap.

After DevReach, I spent the remainder of October working with the Sitefinity Team. My primary objective was to learn Sitefinity 4.0’s architecture. I received lots of personal training that will help me produce webinars, videos and other educational material for the Sitefinity community.

I managed to get the Sitefinity Team to pause from 4.0 development for a few minutes to snag the following picture.

Thanks again to the team for putting up with me (and my pestering questions) for a few weeks! :)

I know everyone is hungry for Sitefinity 4.0 information, but we’re not quite ready to begin publishing tons of details. Features are evolving day by day and we don’t want to communicate bad information.

That being said, I hate to send you away empty handed so here are 5 Sitefinity 4.0 highlights:

New look & feel for the Sitefinity Admin.
Designed by our UX team; it’s clean, simple and very fast.
AJAX everywhere
The Sitefinity backend makes heavy use of AJAX. There are no postbacks and very little viewstate.
RESTful Web Services
All CMS data is exposed through RESTful Web Services. This makes it easier than ever to share/synchronize data between Sitefinity web sites or integrate Sitefinity with external systems.
Policy-based Configuration
Sitefinity 4.0 configuration is no longer stored in the web.config Instead, Sitefinity configuration is saved in separate XML files. These configuration settings can be easily managed inside Sitefinity (no need to fire up Visual Studio). In addition, multiple configurations can be created and associated with a policy (for example, you can attach different configurations to different domain names, user roles, languages, etc.) You’ll need to see this for yourself to appreciate just how powerful this becomes…
LINQ to Sitefinity
Yes, it exists. The expertise we’ve built with Telerik’s OpenAccess ORM is evident in Sitefinity 4.0.

This is just the tip of the iceberg and soon you’ll get a chance to see for yourself. The team is working very hard to finish a 4.0 BETA release before the end of year. Keep watching this blog and the official Sitefinity blog for more information.

As if things weren’t chaotic enough, I’m moving from Scottsdale, Arizona to The Woodlands, Texas this coming weekend. Telerik is opening a new office in Texas and I’ll be working with Telerik Chief Evangelist Todd Anglin in this new office. There are exciting future plans for this new US office…

After that I have two conferences (PDC in L.A. and IMS in London) that I’m attending.

A lot is happening lately. But in the meantime, please accept my apologies for the lack of blog posts. We’re very busy getting all the pieces in place for the release of Sitefinity 4.0. 2010 is going to be an amazing year for Sitefinity!

Visiting Telerik HQ

Gabe Sumner — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:06:10 GMT

Tomorrow I’ll be flying to Boston to attend a mini-summit at Telerik’s Boston office. From there, a few of us will be flying to Sofia, Bulgaria to attend DevReach. After DevReach we’ll be visiting the Telerik headquarters (also in Sofia).

I’ll be staying in Sofia until Oct. 30th. (Amazingly my wife gave me permission to be gone for almost a month.) During this time I’ll receive plenty of 4.0 training from the Sitefinity team. I’ll also help with 4.0 documentation.

A public BETA of Sitefinity 4.0 is planned for later this year (probably December). Along with this BETA we’ll release documentation and videos. This trip is a small part of the road to release.

I’ll try to post a regular stream of photos and small updates. Follow me on Twitter if you’re interested.

New Telerik Houston Office

Gabe Sumner — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:26:18 GMT

If you follow @sitefinitywatch on Twitter, you might have noticed that Telerik opened a new Telerik US office in the Houston area. This Houston office will be the hub for Telerik’s product evangelism efforts and led by Todd Anglin.

I’ll be relocating to this office (from Arizona) in early November. My focus will continue to be Sitefinity ASP.NET CMS. However, in Houston I’ll work face-to-face with other Telerikers. Telerik’s products are intended to compliment and support one another. RadEditor, for example, plays a huge role in Sitefinity. OpenAccess ORM will feature a key role in Sitefinity 4.0.

One of Sitefinity’s key strengths is that it includes other complimentary Telerik products. Having direct access to other evangelists will help me communicate how these other products can be fully utilized in Sitefinity.

If you’re in the Houston area, give me a heads up. I’m always interested in Sitefinity feedback.

6 New Sitefinity Case Studies

Gabe Sumner — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:37:32 GMT

Sitefinity ASP.NET CMS is designed to be very adaptable & extensible. Sitefinity can be customized, using traditional .NET technologies, and integrated into any industry or business setting. Once Sitefinity is deployed, editors can easily manage the web site content using user-friendly tools.

The Sitefinity Showcase contains hundreds of web sites & case studies where Sitefinity has been successfully deployed. This past week, we added added 6 new case studies to the Sitefinity Showcase. Click the links below to give these case studies a look.

If you would like to add your own web site to the Sitefinity Showcase, contact Sales.

Grand Opening: Sitefinity Marketplace

Gabe Sumner — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:23:07 GMT

Earlier today the Sitefinity marketplace was added to Sitefinity.com. This marketplace gives the community a place to exchange modules, controls, themes and templates. These extensions can be easily downloaded and added to an existing Sitefinity web site.

Long-term we hope to accumulate a large library of helpful add-on’s for Sitefinity ASP.NET CMS. This library will make it easier for new and existing customers to address niche needs.

Submissions to this marketplace are extremely welcome. Your custom Sitefinity extensions can be made available for free or at cost.

Submit a module by October 31st and win a great prize:

Free Sitefinity Standard Edition License
$100 Amazon Gift Coupons

Regarding the current downloads, many of the current submissions were created by me [Gabe Sumner] many months ago prior to working for Telerik. I’m still working to get some of this old code cleaned up.

In the meantime, I would love to see myself blown off the main page. So please fire away with your own submissions. I’ve seen a lot of great contributions in the forums and blogs. Get this code cleaned up, make a submission, earn a prize, get some exposure and help the community.

We’re looking forward to seeing your contributions to this new community resource!

Sitefinity 3.7 SP1 now released

Gabe Sumner — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 22:55:15 GMT

Today the Sitefinity team released a Service Pack for Sitefinity 3.7. This Service Pack addresses a handful of issues that were reported since the release of Sitefinity 3.7. In addition, this update includes the latest release of RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX.

Sitefinity 3.7 SP1 can be downloaded from the Sitefinity.com web site. If you’re upgrading from a previous version of Sitefinity, look over the Applying a patch notes.

Here are the release notes:

What’s New

Added Anonymous Access property to Properties of Group Pages
CacheDependencies improvements and optimizations
RadControls for Asp.NET AJAX Q2 2009 SP1

What’s Fixed:

Modules

A lot of optimizations and bug fixes in all the Wiki Controls
Fixed issue with deleting temporary Polls images
Fixed JS error when you change radio button for allowing comments in the blogs settings

Pages

Fixed issue with pages with option "Show in navigation" set to "No" no appearing in the Page Selector
Fixed 404/resource cannot be found errors caused by space in the template name
Fixed wrong message appearing when you select different language version from the dropdown
in the Localization of Pages
Fixed localization issue related to an example query string "ta=:" breaking the language resolving
Fixed localization issue when requesting a physical asp.net page
Fixed incorrect redirect with localization when language does not exist
Fixed History tab images not appear in "History View" window

Controls

Modified News Publication time in the Admin section to be different from the Public Control
Fixed issue with Site Menu control Group page not appearing in Site menu when you change from normal page (not published) to group page
Added missing BreadCrumb separators
Fixed issues with multiple image selectors on the same page in the backend not working properly
Fixed problem with sorting by custom meta field in Library public controls

Known Issues

Wiki Module

Localization and additional providers are not supported
WikiView cannot work with custom configured query string keys

Images and Documents Module

Problems with upload of large zip files
Localization is not supported
Thumbnails for files in video libraries are not supported under Medium Trust

Sitefinity Controls

Filter Expresion property is not implemented for CategoryTree control

Multi-Language & Localization Support in Sitefinity Webinar

Gabe Sumner — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:57:08 GMT

Sitefinity ASP.NET CMS makes it easy to reach out to your global community of editors and allow them to create and manage content in their own language. This webinar will demonstrate how to enable and utilize multi-language support in Sitefinity. In addition, this webinar will examine how to localize the Sitefinity interface (labels, errors messages, contextual help & buttons) for specific languages.

The original video can be watched on telerik.tv.

The notes for this webinar can be found here.

This webinar covers the following topics:

Overview of localization in ASP.NET web sites
Using implicit ASP.NET localization (App_LocalResources)
Using explicit ASP.NET localization (App_GlobalResources)
Enabling localization on ASP.NET pages
Enabling localization globally for an ASP.NET web site (web.config)
Enabling Sitefinity page localization
Setting the Sitefinity localization persistenceMode (DomainName, DomainExt, PathPrefix)
Changing the localization cultures
Creating localized versions of existing Sitefinity pages
Copying content, templates, and themes from existing language versions
Combining RadEditor with Google Translate
Mapping Embedded Sitefinity resources to External resources
Enabling localization for Generic Content-based Sitefinity modules (News)
Making Module Metafields localizable
Localizing the Sitefinity Admin UI
Localizing Sitefinity Public UI elements

Webinar this Week: Multi-Language & Localization Support in Sitefinity

Gabe Sumner — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:02:01 GMT

Sitefinity CMS makes it easy to reach out to your global community of editors and allow them to create and manage content in their own language. This webinar will demonstrate how to enable and utilize multi-language support in Sitefinity. In addition, this webinar will examine how to localize the Sitefinity interface (labels, errors messages, contextual help & buttons) for specific languages.

Title:	Multi-Language & Localization Support in Sitefinity
Date:	Thursday, September 10, 2009
Time:	11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/198737033

Here is a tentative outline for this webinar:

Overview of localization support in ASP.NET
Enabling page localization in Sitefinity
Overview of localization persistence options in Sitefinity
Enabling localization for Generic Content based modules
Localizing the Sitefinity Admin
Localizing Sitefinity embedded resources

Using Sitefinity Templates with a Blank Project

Gabe Sumner — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:47:00 GMT

Sitefinity ASP.NET CMS can be downloaded as an executable installer or a blank project ZIP file. The executable version of Sitefinity comes with a web-based Project Manager as well as 8 design templates. The ZIP file, on the other hand, includes only a bare-bones Sitefinity web site.

Because of the permissions required by the Project Manager, the executable version of Sitefinity can be tricky to get running on consumer-versions of Windows (XP, Vista, 7). To avoid these permission issues I often use the Blank Project ZIP file to start a new Sitefinity project. The Sitefinity Blank Project can be opened in Visual Studio and development can begin immediately.

The problem is that the Blank Project is missing the design templates that come with the executable installer version of Sitefinity. Thankfully there is a work-around to this that allows Sitefinity design templates to be used with the Blank Project.

Watch the original video on Telerik.tv.

Getting the Design Templates

The Sitefinity Design Templates are included in the executable installer. The easiest way to get these templates is to download & run the installer.

Run the installer and click through the install steps.

Finding the Design Templates

By default, Sitefinity will install to C:\Program Files\telerik\Sitefinity3.x

The templates can be found at C:\Program Files\telerik\Sitefinity3.x\ProjectManager\Templates

Each of these template directories has a project.zip file. This zip file contains the files associated with the template.

Applying the Templates to a Blank Project

Download the Blank Project zip file from the Sitefinity downloads section. Unzip the contents of this zip file to a directory of your choosing. Then, copy the contents of the template’s project.zip file to the Blank Project’s folder.

Some Blank Project files will be overwritten by the template files. If prompted to overwrite files, click Yes.

Configuring the Blank Project to use the Template

Open the Blank Project in Visual Studio and open the ~/web.config file.

Find the <cms> section and add a siteTemplate property that refers to the chosen template.

<cms defaultProvider="Sitefinity" pageExtension=".aspx" disabled="true" pageEditorUIMode="Overlay" siteTemplate="Company-Emerald">
  ...
</cms>

The siteTemplate name must match the template’s directory name in the steps above.

Start the Web Site / Launch the Project Startup

Right-click the root of the Blank Project Sitefinity web site and click View in Browser. Sitefinity’s Project Startup will load in a web browser. Click through the steps to configure Sitefinity.

The final step will present an opportunity to import data from the template.

Click I’m done to complete the setup. This new web site will now be using the chosen template.

Update: I just learned that this topic & technique was already covered by Jörg Lang:

Setting up a Sitefinity site using a predefined template without using the project manager

Installing Sitefinity from the Web Platform Installer

Gabe Sumner — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:39:16 GMT

I’m happy to announce that Sitefinity Community Edition is now available in the Windows Web App Gallery. Sitefinity Community Edition is a free version of Telerik’s popular Sitefinity ASP.NET CMS and is perfect for personal & small web sites (see features).

All applications in the Web App Gallery can be installed using the Web Platform Installer. This is a free tool that makes it easy to download & install popular applications available for the Microsoft Web Platform.

Below is a video and instructions that demonstrate how to install Sitefinity CE using the Web Platform Installer.

Watch the original video at telerik.tv.

Download the Web Platform Installer and Sitefinity CE

1. Visit Sitefinity Community Edition in the Web App Gallery

2. Click the Install button – you will be prompted to install the Web Platform Installer

3. After the Web Platform Installer is installed, Sitefinity CE details will be displayed.

4. Click the Install button and then I Accept to confirm the download

5. After Sitefinity is downloaded confirm the site information

6. Click the Continue button and Sitefinity will be installed.

Launching the web application using the link shown above will open the Sitefinity CMS Startup in a new browser window. However, the project startup of Sitefinity requires file permissions that might not already be in place. To ensure project start-up will succeed, follow the instructions below.

Using IIS Manager to Configure Sitefinity CE

1. Click the Start Orb –> Control Panel –> System and Security –> Administrative Tools

2. Click the IIS Manager

3. Expand Sites and select the new SitefinityCommunityEdition application

4. Click the Authentication icon.

5. Ensure that Anonymous Authentication is Disabled

6. Ensure that ASP.NET Impersonation is Enabled

7. Ensure that Forms Authentication is Disabled.

8. Ensure that Windows Authentication is Enabled

The Authentication settings above will force the Sitefinity web site to use the credentials of the user account that is executing the browser. Below are instructions for launching Internet Explorer as Administrator. Because Sitefinity will be executing as Administrator, this will bypass the permission issues that might otherwise be encountered during Sitefinity project startup.

Launch the Sitefinity Project Startup

1. Right-click the IE browser icon and click Run As Administrator…

2. Go to the URL for the Sitefinity web site. By default this will be: http://localhost/sitefinitycommunityedition/

3. Agree to the Community Edition License details

4. Enter the database details

Customize the database information as needed. Note, however, that the SqlExpress option relies on User Instances. These User Instances are difficult to configure with IIS. SqlExpress can still be used, but it’s often easier to manually create the database using SQL Server Management Studio. See the Bullet Proof Guide to Installing Sitefinity for information about manually creating a SQL Express database.

5. Create an Administrator account

6. Click the I’m done button

Sitefinity will now redirect to the the Sitefinity Administration login. However, because Anonymous Access and Forms Authentication has been disabled in the steps above, this will likely generate an error. To successfully login to Sitefinity these settings must be rest.

Changing IIS Authentication for the Sitefinity Web Site

1. Click the Start Orb –> Control Panel –> System and Security –> Administrative Tools

2. Click the IIS Manager

3. Expand Sites and select the new SitefinityCommunityEdition application

4. Click the Authentication icon

8. Ensure that Anonymous Authentication is Enabled

9. Ensure that ASP.NET Impersonation is Disabled

10. Ensure that Forms Authentication is Enabled

11. Ensure that Windows Authentication is Disabled

Login to the Sitefinity Administration Web Site

The Sitefinity Administration page can be accessed by adding “/sitefinity” to the end of the URL.

1. Visit: http://localhost/sitefinitycommunityedition/sitefinity

2. Login using the Admin credentials that were chosen above

Welcome to Sitefinity! You can click Pages to begin adding pages. For more information about designing and customizing Sitefinity, please visit the Sitefinity Support Page.

Sitefinity API Tips & Tricks Webinar

Gabe Sumner — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:31:17 GMT

Under the hood Sitefinity has a very rich API that can be used to interact with CMS resources. This webinar will demonstrate how to use this API to create, update and retrieve CMS resources. In addition, we'll explore how to use this API to create advanced features and wield CMS resources in unexpected ways.

The original video can be watched on telerik.tv.

The notes for this webinar can be found here.

This webinar covers the following topics:

Sitefinity Pages API Overview
Fetch all pages
Fetch some page
Create a new page
Find a page by name
Deleting pages
Create a page - set properties, set templates, set themes and add controls
Modify a page – alter existing controls, add additional controls
Rollback to a previous version of the page
Generic Content API Overview
Get Generic Content items
Setting a new Generic Content Provider
Getting news using the ContentManager
Getting news using the NewsManager
Add an Event – set category and tags using ContentManager
Add an Event – set category and tags using EventsManager
Finding events by title
Finding events by date
Finding events by tag – GetContent, GetEvents
Modifying an Event
Rollback to a previous version of an event
Non-Generic Content Based Modules – API Overview
Add a new List item

Webinar this Week: Sitefinity API Tips & Tricks

Gabe Sumner — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:48:54 GMT

How do you side-step the Sitefinity web-based admin and perform CMS tasks programmatically?

Join us for a Webinar on Thursday, August 20th

Title:	Sitefinity API Tips & Tricks
Date:	Thursday, August 20, 2009
Time:	11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/532751329

Here is a tentative outline for this webinar:

Sitefinity API Overview
Finding pages
Creating, Deleting and Modifying pages
Finding controls & content
Adding tags & categories to content
Suggestions? Post them below.

First Look - Sitefinity Wiki Module

Gabe Sumner — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:16:42 GMT

Earlier this week Sitefinity 3.7 was released. The primary focus of this release was the inclusion of the latest RadControls for AJAX. However, hidden in this release were a few nice extras, including a brand new Wiki Module.

The Wiki Module joins the ranks of other Sitefinity Modules (Blogs, Events, Polls, Forums, etc) and adds a wonderful new feature to Sitefinity. This is a brand new module and we’re very interested in suggestions and feedback. Future improvements are already being planned based on early community feedback we’ve received. Please keep it coming!

Please watch the video below to get a quick look at how to use the new Wiki Module in your own web site. [Watch the original video at telerik.tv]

New Templates in Sitefinity 3.7

Gabe Sumner — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:19:30 GMT

These new templates can be found in the Community or Standard exe version of Sitefinity 3.7. [screenshots of the new templates]

Using the new Templates

When a new web site is created using the Sitefinity Project Manager, these new templates will be available in the templates list. Select the desired template and click Create this Project.

Company-Inspiration Template

Community-Summer Template

Sitefinity 3.7 now released!

Gabe Sumner — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:43:31 GMT

Earlier today Georgi Chokov announced the release of Sitefinity 3.7 on the official Sitefinity blogs. The primary focus of this release was the inclusion of the Q2 release of RadControls. However, after reading the release notes, I was delighted to see how many items the team snuck into this minor release. Download this release and check out the upgrade notes.

Here are the release notes:

Release Highlights

Wiki module
- Wiki Module for managing Wikis is now part of the Standard and Community versions. You can find its documentation in the User Manual.

RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Q2 2009
- The latest RadControls are now shipped with Sitefinity

2 new site templates
- Community Summer and Company Inspiration

Group Operations
- Group Operations for Generic Content based modules (Move/Delete content items)

New Social Bookmark buttons
- Twitter is added to the social toolbar

Domain to Page Mapping
- Map a domain to a specific page.

What’s Fixed

Images and Documents
- Performance optimizations in Libraries - Lazy loading of items for lower memory consumption
- Thumbnail resize algorithm improved, there are no borders now

Newsletters
- Emails with special characters in FirstName, LastName can now receive newsletters
- Newsletter sending hangs
- "Unsubscribe" link in a newsletter improvements

Polls
- Color picker issue with more than 8 questions is now fixed. Using the RadControls color picker now

Localization
- Javascript errors fixed if the localization resources contain special characters
- Language Dropdown when localization is set to QueryString is now working properly
- Special characters in the ALT tag of images in RadEditor produces unreadable fonts
- redirectToHomePage option fixed when used the localization is enabled
- View and Create permissions for different language versions

Sitefinity controls
- "Collection was modified" error in ContentView based controls
- EventsView - Expandable List mode - formatting icons fixes
- EventsView - Expandable List mode - javascript issues fixes
- Dynamic Hyper Link control - fixed an error when you set navigate URL address with http
- Site Menu - LastExpandLevel property now works correctly
- Spam Protector improvements
- Forums Controls could now be customized through the resource files
- Password recovery control "Your attempt to retrieve your password was not successful. Please try again" issue

Other fixes
- Link Manager dialog now shows the correct language version
- Sitefinity Template parses improvements
- News RSS feeds respect the Publication Date now
- Pages External URL validators updated to accept # character
- Social Bookmarks - fixes in the services urls

Known Issues

Wiki
- Localization and additional providers are not supported
- WikiView cannot work with custom configured query string keys

Images and Documents
- Upload of large files in zip files issues
- Localization is not supported

Sitefinity controls
- Filter Expresion property is not implemented for CategoryTree control